It’s still obvious to even the most casual viewer that Netflix hates movies, because they won’t offer their viewers something that theaters, LaserDiscs, videotapes, DVDs, Blu-rays, and even Mutoscopes offered as a matter of course: the ability to watch a film from the first frame to the last. – Slate
Author: Douglas McLennan
Elgar Manuscript Found After 100 Years And Performed
Composed in 1924, the ‘Andante’ melody had originally been scribbled by Elgar on a sheet of manuscript paper, which he signed clearly with his name. But for more than a century, it was hidden within the pages of a small black autograph book once owned by Lydia Tabb – a Barnardo’s charity fundraiser. – Express and Star
There Are A Surprising Number Of Copies In Museums. Are Those Museums Being Honest About What They’re Showing?
The role of copies still raises larger questions about the mission of museums and the nature of authenticity. Does it matter if the works of art or historical objects on display are copies? Does it render the experience of visitors less meaningful? And are the institutions that don’t clearly identify the copies in some way shirking their responsibility to the public? – Washington Post
Early Days: Cashing In On Artificial Intelligence-Created Art
If they hadn’t found each other in the New York art scene, the players involved could have met on a Spike Jonze film set: a computer scientist commanding five-figure print sales from software that generates inkjet-printed images; a former hotel-chain financial analyst turned Chelsea techno-gallerist with apparent ties to fine-arts nobility; a venture capitalist with two doctoral degrees in biomedical informatics; and an art consultant who put the whole thing together, A-Team–style, after a chance encounter at a blockchain conference. Together, they hope to reinvent visual art, or at least to cash in on machine-learning hype along the way. – The Atlantic
Is Michael Jackson Inc. Too Big To Cancel?
The recent phenomenon of so-called cancel culture — the notion of withholding moral, financial and other support for prominent figures deemed problematic — has grown to become the default reaction in circumstances of troubling allegations or unacceptable behaviour. But is the King of Pop too big to cancel? – CBC
Broadway Hit: “Network” Makes Back Its Investment In Just 15 Weeks
One of this Broadway season’s clearest successes, the play, directed by Ivo van Hove and also starring Tony Goldwyn and Tatiana Maslany, routinely posts weekly box office of $1 million or more, playing to sell-out or near-sell-out houses. For the week ending March 3, Network grossed $1,024,594, with 99% of seats filled. – Deadline
Buddy Guy – The Last Of His Kind?
Buddy Guy is eighty-two and a master of the blues. What weighs on him is the idea that he may be the last. Several years ago, after the funeral of B. B. King, he was overcome not only with grief for a friend but also with a suffocating sense of responsibility. – The New Yorker
The Utility (And Importance) Of Cliches
While we tend to condemn clichés harshly, the scholar of rhetoric Ruth Amossy at Tel Aviv University has shown that they’re in fact crucial to the way we bond with and read other human beings. ‘How have you been?’ – ‘Not bad at all!’: in our daily interactions, clichés represent a communicative common ground, by avoiding the need to question or establish the premises of speech. They are a kind of a shared mental algorithm that facilitates efficient interaction and reaffirms social relationships. – Aeon
It Is Often Said Art Promotes Empathy. Is This Really A Good Thing?
This idea is particularly prevalent when it comes to those works of art described as “narrative”: stories, novels, TV shows, movies, comics. We assume that works that depict characters in action over time must make us empathize with them, or as the saying goes, “walk a mile in their shoes.” And we assume that this is a good thing. Why? – New York Review of Books
UK’s Society Of Authors Threatens To Sue Internet Archive Over Digital Lending Library
The Internet Archive began digitising books in 2005, because “not everyone has access to a public or academic library with a good collection, so to provide universal access we need to provide digital versions of books”. Today the archive scans 1,000 books a day in 28 locations around the world, through its book scanning and book drive programmes – with the “ultimate goal of [making] all the published works of humankind available to everyone in the world”. Users can borrow up to five books at a time, with each loan expiring after two weeks. – The Guardian